NASCAR, tracks rely on temporary solution until SAFER barriers can be installed

FONTANA, Calif. -- When Kyle Busch crashed head-on into an unprotected concrete wall at Daytona International Speedway, it left one of NASCAR's biggest stars hospitalized with a broken right leg and left foot and sidelined indefinitely.

It also forced NASCAR and racing venues to take a fast, hard look at how they can make tracks safer — now.

The immediate answer has been tire barriers — stacks of tires bolted together into packs that can be installed relatively quickly at areas where the sanctioning body or tracks see a need for cushioning.

SAFER barrier inventor Dean Sicking said that was an acceptable stopgap in certain situations. In fact, Sicking told USA TODAY Sports, tire barriers are usually better than SAFER barriers when it comes to head-on and large-angle impacts.

But for the more common impacts, such as at a 45-degree angle, SAFER barriers are more effective.

"(The tire barrier) grabs you," said Sicking, a professor at Alabama at Birmingham. "So if you hit at low angle, like Dale Earnhardt's crash (which killed him in the 2001 Daytona 500), 13-degree angle, it's going to turn that car right into the barrier and you're going to come to a stop right now. That's tough."

Sam Hornish Jr., who has raced at tracks with tire barriers in NASCAR and IndyCar, says the tire packs can be good as long as they are in areas well off the racing surface.

"They do soften that blow, but what we have seen with tire barriers in the past is, generally, if they are too close to the racetrack and someone hits them, it bounces you back toward the track," Hornish said. "Those hits are usually way more dangerous than the initial one you took hitting the wall."

Tire barriers aren't new, but they've dominated the safety headlines in racing recently as tracks scramble to install more SAFER barriers, which are costly and take more time to erect.

NASCAR and the tracks have said they will accelerate the evaluation process and determine where to put permanent SAFER barriers (Steel And Foam Energy Reduction or so-called "soft walls") on many of the remaining uncovered areas. Weekly updates from the track hosting NASCAR's next stop have become standard.

Auto Club Speedway, the site of this weekend's races and the speedy 2-mile oval where Denny Hamlin broke his back when he crashed head-on into an interior concrete wall in 2013, is installing tire barriers on the inside of Turn 1. Track President Dave Allen was unavailable for comment but said in a statement last week that the safety of drivers, fans and speedway workers was and always had been a top priority.

Temporary solution

On NASCAR's high-speed ovals, the tires aren't meant to be a permanent solution but somewhat of a Band-Aid until SAFER barriers can be put into place.

But on ovals the barriers are typically placed far from the racing surface. That's why the barriers are more of an issue in IndyCar, which often races on road courses or street circuits where tire packs could be a useful temporary solution.

"The problem with tire barriers for us is we don't have fenders, and when you go into the tires it'll rip the steering wheel out of your hand," Verizon IndyCar Series driver Graham Rahal told USA TODAY Sports. "We don't have power steering like they do (in NASCAR), so when you hit a tire, if it catches your wrist or something, it can do a lot of damage quickly."

Some IndyCar drivers called for more tire packs this week at Barber Motorsports Park in Birmingham, Ala., after Sage Karam hit an unprotected steel Armco barrier during testing, injuring his hand and wrist.

Retired four-time IndyCar champion Dario Franchitti said a tire barrier should have been at the Turn 15 wall.

Many of the barrier areas at Barber are protected by tires that are covered with white vinyl to make them look more aesthetically pleasing, track manager Mark Whitt told USA TODAY Sports. Those tires are guarded by conveyor belts; Sicking, who consults with Barber on safety, says they give the packs a smooth surface so they don't grab cars.

Whitt said the tire barriers were very expensive but added, "We don't look at safety as cost-prohibitive.

"We just look at it where potential things can happen and where they're needed most," he said. "We have a lot of tire barriers here. ... Crews of people are needed to put that all in place, but we can do it. No problem. We've done it thousands and thousands of times."

Moving quickly

NASCAR tracks have found themselves forced to act quickly in the wake of Busch's crash.

Hours after Busch's crash Feb. 21, Daytona International Speedway President Joie Chitwood III made a decision: The spot where Busch hit, near the exit of the tri-oval, would be covered with tire barriers by the time the green flag for the Daytona 500 waved the next day.

Before his news conference was complete, workers already were unloading tire packs out of semitrailers and placing them against the wall. The stopgap addition was in stark contrast to the construction backdrop at the speedway, which is in the midst of a $400 million facelift that focuses on fan amenities.

Atlanta Motor Speedway, which hosted NASCAR races the weekend after the Daytona 500, put 51 feet of tire barriers in Turn 1 and 117 feet in Turn 4, using about 74 tire packs (stacks with 15 tires each) that were shipped in from Charlotte on three flat-bed trucks, track spokesman Dustin Bixby told USA TODAY Sports.

Bixby said he did not know the cost but the time investment wasn't very big: The packs left Charlotte on a Tuesday and were in place by the time cars hit the track for a test session two days later.

Soon after, other tracks followed suit — something that is expected to continue throughout the season.

None were added for the race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, where a hard hit by Jeff Gordon in 2008 prompted the track to add a SAFER barrier at the site of his crash.

Phoenix International Raceway installed tire barriers on the inside wall of Turn 4 before last weekend's events. Track spokesman Zac Emmons told USA TODAY Sports it took about four or five hours to install the barriers, which came from Auto Club Speedway. Phoenix did not disclose the cost.

NASCAR referred questions on the tire barriers to the individual tracks and declined to make an official available to comment for this story. The sanctioning body considers every situation different and views the barriers as one of a handful of safeguards that can be implemented.

The tire barriers might not be a fixture on NASCAR ovals for long. Talladega Superspeedway announced Thursday that it would add SAFER barriers in three locations on its inside walls in time for its race weekend May 1-3.

But Sicking said he wouldn't criticize NASCAR for not having SAFER barriers, which first were used at Indianapolis Motor Speedway in 2002, installed everywhere. The sanctioning body was very aggressive from 2004 to '08, he said, before the economy went bad.

"Then some of the tracks got weak," he said. "Some were sitting on the verge of fiscal collapse, so NASCAR backed off some, to keep them in business, to keep the sport going.

"It's hard when you're climbing back from the brink of bankruptcy to know when you're liquid enough to start making big capital improvements."